The American Card-Player: Containing clear and comprehensive directions for playing the games of euchre, whist, bezique, all-fours, pitch, commercial pitch, French fours, all fives, cassino, cribbage, straight and draw poker, and whiskey poker: together with all the laws of those games by (William Dick); [Alphonso Taft] - 1866

New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1866. First edition. Hardcover. Fair. 1866, First edition. Hardcover, 12mo., original brown cloth, gilt title. 151 pp., plus 8 pp. of ads. Old ownership signature of Alphonso Taft on the front pastedown and title page. Taft was the Attorney General and Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant and the father of President William Taft. Fair condition, as almost always the case with this book. Heavy mottling and staining to the covers; loss to sloth at spine ends; other punctures and tears along the spine. Front hinge cracked. Rear fly leaf has been removed. Endpapers are covered in former owner's signatures, notes and scribbles. A few other signatures on the title page and first few pages of text. Paper browned and with light foxing, but readable. Tape strip on the fly leaf and title page (partially covering Taft's signature there). Secure binding. An important book on card games, known as the first one published in America to formalize the rules of poker. This is the much scarcer full cloth binding. An ad in the back for this book notes two covers, the cloth-backed version for 50 cents, and this 'Bound in cloth, gilt side' one for 75 cents.